BNM is able to build its own project tree and is more than 3 times faster than Maven. Not everything is implemented yet, but BNM can build itself.

There is also an eclipse integration using the BNM eclipse plugin. Please use the eclipse update site http://www.bebbosoft.de/plugins to install the feature.

Can I use existing pom.xml files?

Yes you can! Right now not all plugins are present. Since BNM does not use Maven plugins a replacement plugin must exist. Each replacement plugin maps itself to the maven id (ignoring the maven version). BNM runs its own plugins on your existing pom.xml files.

Since BNM is more a proof that Maven could be much faster, there is still hope that Maven will improve. Nevertheless it is futile to wait. The best way today is to use BNM and Maven in parallel: - use BNM to compile/build during your development cycle - use Maven for everything else This also reduces the need for many plugins (deployment etc. pp).

Can I code own plugins?

Yes you can. And you don't need any special processing to create a plugin since BNM uses Java annotations to attach the pom.xml values to plugin instances.

Still be aware that BNM plugins must be thread safe! If your plugins hooks some third party stuff which isn't thread safe, synchronize the invokation in the plugins code.